Vienna ... Feb 14, 2009

We slept ok after returning from the ball. Katie had asked earlier if she could go with us. I told her she could if she cleaned the house and made her own dress (without the help of the mice). She didn't make it to the ball with us! She was, however, to accompany us as we made our normal tour around Vienna and Stephansdom, although we didn't make the entire walk from the Cathedral to the Hofburg because it was FREEZING (I even actually wore my coat!). We went inside St. Stephan's and for the first time I got a few decent interior shots now that we learned how to use the "indoor" feature on our camera. Whitney was kind enough to stay with Ashley and Ryan while Heather, Katie, and I toured the catacombs underneath the Cathedral. This is where they have buried the different Bishop's of the church and where they used to throw the dead bodies of those that died during the Black Plague. At one point, though, the smell became so bad that they sent prisoners down to clean and stack all the bones. You can still see many of them there. It is amazing the things they decide to keep around and what we tourists enjoy seeing. The only picture I got was a "rogue" shot when the guide wasn't looking (no pictures for some reason), so it didn't come out too well.
We finished our morning off with Zanoni's gelato (as I have said before, it never matters how cold it is outside, we will always get Zanoni's before returning from Vienna) and made it back to Budapest in the early afternoon.